Concluding Assessments

Abstract

Context matters-this was one key statement in the theoretical part of this book. Urban political studies need to take into account a variety of social, political, economic, cultural and historical framework conditions, without falling victim to deterministic fallacies. These theoretical insights then informed the overall design of the empirical comparison in the second part. Therein, I illustrated in detail that in many ways, Helsinki and Stockholm are both nested in a broader Nordic context. In fact, we have seen that the Nordic world of welfare capitalism can be legitimately described as a distinct political and societal model. The political culture of the Nordic countries is mainly dominated by social democratic values such as social cohesion and integration, consensus and corporatism, egalitarianism and universalism. These values find their institutional expression in the exceedingly state- centered character of Nordic welfare regimes-it is the public sector which clearly constitutes the lynchpin of welfare production and provision. This strong state operates on two scales. On the one hand, the powerful intervening role of central governments and their attempt to generate consistent conditions throughout the country point to the unitary character of the Nordic welfare states. On the other hand, we have seen that Finnish and Swedish municipalities are mighty landlords, who are constitutionally granted extensive fiscal and political autonomies. Thus, we can say that the Nordic model rests on a strong national and municipal pillar, while political power or identities on a regional level have been far less developed.